Saturday, 11 June 2011

In its continuing attempts to make visitors come to Loch Ness for reasons other than you know what, the local authorities have been supporting the RockNess music festival for the last five years and it continues to grow in popularity.

There is normally something Nessie related and this time we have the mini submarine being rolled out for some monster hunting. No doubt there will also be a good chance that someone high on alcohol or drugs may see something unusual in the waters.

However, some sightings of the monster suggest that the creature is sensitive to noise. Someone shouts, the creature submerges. A car door slams, it's gone. RockNess is reasonably out of the way in the Aldourie Castle area but it seems certain that Nessie will be steering clear of the cacophany.

The BBC Gaelic channel BBC Alba will be showing highlights from the festival tonight so may be worth checking out for any monster related items.

Monday, 6 June 2011

There is a trend I see today in Loch Ness Monster research and perhaps cryptozoology in general that I can only describe as harmful to future research. I describe it as a form of revisionism in which the original raw data is subject to additions and deletions all in the name of said research. Let me state the obvious, raw data is of vital importance and to subject it to unwarranted change is to be avoided at all costs.

I have witnessed this in various forms across the board and there is no one single person particularly guilty. It just seems to have become the accepted norm that the data can be revised as if it was incomplete. The problems arise however when the data is being arbitrarily altered to fit current theories rather than because other raw data or the internal evidence demands it. Let me give two theoretical examples where the two opposing approaches are used.

Firstly suppose a witness states that they were looking south towards Castle Urquhart from Foyers. This is patently wrong since Urquhart Castle is north of the village of Foyers. The raw data can be acceptable revised to say "north" instead of "south". However, suppose the editor of the data decides to move the story from Foyers to Inverfarigaig (a few miles north of Foyers). The change may seem negligible but it is wrong if the internal evidence does not warrant it. The first example is correction, the second is revisionism.

I have been debating Dale Drinnon on his theories that some land based sightings of Nessie were elk and six foot otters. Dale is entitled to hold these opinions, promote them and defend them. I don't single him out as being the worst example of what I have seen, in fact, those who believe in a large, unknown creature may also indulge in this. But since he is currently blogging on this, I give my critique. Let me give an example of the problem here.

I posted recently on the Alec Muir land sighting. I quoted verbatim from the original text which you can read here.

Name: Alec MuirDate: 1930'sLocation: InverfarigaigDescription: Large beast crossed road in front of car. Left visible trail (footprints or hoofprints, normal 4-legged animal) and showed depression in vegetation where it had been resting.

The first problem encountered here is the addition of the data "footprints or hoofprints, normal 4-legged animal". The words are not offered as opinion or labelled probable but are given as a statement - they were four legged footprints. However, you will not find these words in the original account for they are words extrapolated and then interpolated into the text above. The original in no way offers any internal evidence to suggest what kind of animal left what kind of trail. There is not enough internal data to make this extrapolation. These are unwarranted words.

The second problem is the omission of data or rather what is not mentioned in this text. The original account states that the creature obstructed the car for a full ten minutes! Now I may be going out on a limb here, but if a witness cannot after ten minutes figure out they are looking at a moose or something that is patently "normal" then they are most likely blind and should not be driving in the first place. The problem is that if the ten minutes is not mentioned in the text then the uninformed reader will naturally assume that this account was fleeting like the other ones and hence "may" have misindentified the creature. I will assume Dale was not aware of this ten minute problem and the omission of data is accidental - although the effect is the same.

So the underlying problem is the all too common problem of making the data fit the theory. Assume a theoretical researcher does not believe that Loch Ness holds large unknown creatures. As a consequence, if he reads an eyewitness report as reporting a long serpentine head and neck, this will be regarded as untrue and inconsistent with whatever theory they hold. The witness was clearly wrong in the researcher's eyes and two things must have happened:

1. The witness misjudged the situation and/or2. The original account was subsequently exagerrated by the witness or another.

... even if there is no evidence to suggest these accretions happened. However, this leads to the problem of what the witness actually saw and this is where the interpolation prejudiced by the researcher's pet theory comes in. The researcher has justified re-editing the account, but solely on the grounds that there just cannot be a large unknown creature in Loch Ness.

The danger here is that what the editor has added as a comment/opinion can often end up as part of the alleged "original" account. Perhaps in 20 years we will see "de facto" accounts of the Alec Muir sighting in which a beast quickly shot across his car and left hoof marks in the grass and all because of a succession of copying and pasting off the Internet.

I said those who believe in a monster in Loch Ness can be guilty too. Regarding the Alfred Cruickshank land sighting of 1923, Tim Dinsdale was troubled that the beast described was khaki green and had a short neck. This did not harmonise with the usual elephant grey and long neck. Tim to his credit still published the account without any redactionism but offered his thoughts on why this was so. Perhaps the creature was looking towards the car and gave a foreshortened neck appearance. Perhaps the car's ancient magneto lights as they faded gave the creature a green tint.

Ironically, Dale Drinnon accepts Dinsdale's fading green light explanation (presumably because it is convenient to his theory with its inconveniently brown-gray colored super otter). I emailed the owner of a Model T Ford enthusiast's website and asked if the colour of a magneto headlight emitted any colour in full or fading luminence. His reply was this:

"The bulb was a typical light bulb of the time. It was bright white at full brilliance but turned a bit yellowier as the engine slowed down. Looking at it, it just dimmed...a color change was not too evident."

In other words, not very likely to turn a grey/brown otter khaki green. Whatever Cruickshank saw was most likely green. So, when the redactionist approaches this account one can imagine the checklist:

We are in the third generation of Loch Ness Monster researchers. The first were led by Rupert T. Gould and believed in a monster. The second generation were led by Dinsdale thirty years later, went through the LNIB and the Rines expeditions and believed in a monster (with some exceptions like Burton). Nearly thirty years on again and this third and current generation largely does not believe in a monster. In this case, those who believe in a monster are now the exception. Such is the evolution of a skeptical society. The Loch Ness phenomenon is shoehorned into the genres of each successive generation but what the beast actually is when stripped of each generation's preconceptions is another matter entirely.